


The Interrogation

by JoJo



Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Community: fic_promptly, Gen, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-25
Updated: 2013-04-25
Packaged: 2017-12-08 20:45:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/765839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoJo/pseuds/JoJo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With Ezra, a little trust goes a long way</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Interrogation

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to farad for the wonderful prompt - "the image of his mother crying comes to him at the most inconvenient times"
> 
> and to dichotomystudios for inspiring the summary :)

“Dear me,” Ezra said, projecting a particular sympathy and understanding he doubted any of the others could have managed—save Buck, maybe. “Dear me, how dreadful it must have been.”

He’d been trying some charm on the woman at the clerk’s desk for a couple of minutes now, assuring her of his peaceable nature and genuine concern. She’d seemed to believe him, even while doing little but repeat in an increasingly tearful voice that there was nothing she could tell him. All along she’d stood ramrod stiff, back to the row of keys hanging behind her, her hands clasped very tightly together in front of her chest. Which he felt a significant tell that she was hiding something.

“And you had the misfortune to have some... contact with these desperadoes?”

It was at that, finally, that the hands unclasped. The woman tugged at a tip of lace poking from the cuff of her dress.

Ezra felt his hackles rise. Just a mere glimpse of the object was enough—the second oldest ruse in the book, and one of his mother’s favorites. He’d always hoped he wasn’t totally devoid of compassion, but really... whatever this woman knew about Vin’s whereabouts would not be denied him by a few crocodile tears. No, sir. He couldn’t say as he knew much about women in general, not ever having chosen their company so to speak, but he knew all about this.

She’d picked the wrong man to hoodwink.

Out on the boardwalk J.D. and Josiah were waiting, in various degrees of impatience and skepticism, for him to employ his much-vaunted ‘subtle’ methods of interrogation. Down at the livery somewhere he knew Buck and Chris were busy with their own, more muscular, methods of information-gathering. Time was of the essence. Vin was gone, disappeared without trace; they believed more than one person in this cow-town knew where. And the woman standing a few feet from him maybe more than most. Her hotel was one of the very few places that hadn’t been trashed when things had gone to hell here. There had to be a reason why.

She was good. He’d give her that. Manipulating her own emotions as well as trying to manipulate his. Drawing on her real fears, so a tinge of reality underpinned her act.

“I was afraid,” the woman said, her voice tremulous, but not indistinct. “I couldn’t think straight. There were so many of them.” The emphasis was spine-tingling, the tone dropped at the end, leaving nothing but a voiceless whisper of remembered terror. She wouldn’t make eye contact with him, hadn’t from the outset. The handkerchief came up, wound tightly around her thumb and forefinger. Ezra sighed inwardly, familiar with this, waiting for the dab at the corner of one eye. He was impressed, in spite of himself, at the spot of damp that came away. His gaze followed the course of the handkerchief back down to the faintly trembling lips.

Damn thing.

It had ever been the flag of artifice, a bait skillfully laid or mislaid, a far from innocent flutter of white lace against black silk. Unless he was voluntarily in on the game Ezra would greet its arrival in his mother’s hand with no more than a single, painful grit of his teeth.

The handkerchief meant a mark spotted or a lie propagated. Such a complete lack of honest emotion in all cases that the usual mix of shame and impatience griped in his belly to remember all those times.

He pulled himself back to the matter in hand.

“I am sorry to press you, madam... seeing what a terrible experience you’ve had... but how many, exactly, is ‘so many’? And, more importantly, where were they going?”

“Oh I can’t..” she murmured, and for Heaven’s sake she managed to summon enough tears for one to brim over, splash on to the blotter lying on the desk. Just as Maude could do when her son pushed her that bit too hard, bringing all his attempts to thwart her to a skidding halt. “I shut my eyes, I shut my... I didn’t... I... I’m lucky to even be alive.”

Ezra couldn’t quite help the barb of steely sarcasm that entered his voice then. Nathan was out there with his hands full of the injured for crying out loud and there wasn’t a mark on her. “Well... thankful as we all are, of course, that not one hair on your head was harmed, it would be much, much more useful to know in which direction they rode out? Their names?”

She looked at him then, shocked, recognizing the disbelief. Suddenly doubting the empathy previously on display. Her wet lashes fluttered, color rushed from her face and then returned. The trembling lips parted, but not one word came out. A blank look came over her, as if she couldn’t speak of it anymore, wouldn’t speak of it to him, would just... close up.

He felt a hard dislike of her, a biting frustration at his need to get information quickly and her power to block him. He cursed whatever weakness it was in him that allowed Maude to get in the way of his intentions, obscuring his ability at this most vital of times to know truth from falsehood. And yet, at the same time, Ezra was full of doubt—for what was he except his mother’s son? Wasn’t this yet another time he should take up Josiah’s suggestion, and look into his own heart?

The damned handkerchief. Precursor of deception throughout his life. She’d used one so often, sent men tumbling before her, believing her every artful little blink, bright tear and hitch of breath. Without fail, without damned fail it had been chicanery... except for that one time.

He drew in a sharp breath, as if he’d been kicked.

The sudden image that came to him was so nauseating, he felt a cold sweat prickle his skin. Felt his heart skitter out of control, like it had when he’d seen her like that. Crying so hard her face was contorted. Frightening and unfamiliar in her pain and fear.

Outside he could see the back of Josiah’s hat as he stood looking up the street towards the livery, the shape of J.D.’s bowler passing the window as he paced up and down along the boardwalk.

It occurred to Ezra in a second, equally painful rush that he was going to have to admit defeat here. That harsh twist of memory still stinging his insides made damn sure he wasn’t going to hustle the woman further. Probably a decision he’d regret and possibly a very bad call indeed. If so, it was a defeat Vin could almost certainly ill afford and that the rest wouldn’t thank him for. Especially since he’d made the mistake, once again, of being so arrogant, so sure in his cleverness. Chris was going to give him that look again, the one that wondered why he’d thought Ezra would be useful in the first place. The ‘Liver-eating Jones’ look. And Ezra would be rowing against the tide for the next few weeks, trying to make up for it.

Well, it was too bad. None of that would matter anyhow if they couldn’t get to Vin in time.

He turned his attention back to the woman, even the move of his head in her direction causing her to start.

“Excuse me,” he said, clearing his throat. “It’s merely that we need information. Most urgently. I see now that... I apologize for my threatening tone.”

The blank look on her face didn’t alter. She kept the handkerchief pressed to her mouth in a gesture he associated with a cynical play on his gallantry. Only, more than inconveniently, his gut was telling him something else.

He found himself speaking more gently yet to her, in a voice he hardly recognized in himself. “Please tell me then... is there anything, anything at all I can...?”

The hand holding the handkerchief clenched, repelling him. Another image flashed into his head. Of himself, at some age he couldn’t identify, pleading to know what was wrong. Ezra could do no more than draw back, utterly confused, as he had drawn back then.

At the door he saw Josiah and J.D. looking in. He could feel their desperate need for answers, something to hang on to, something Ezra had promised them.

“Rest assured,” he said quickly, glancing back at her. He became more formal, although kept his tone soft. “We shall apprehend them. And if you should require assistance my associate Mr. Jackson will be remaining here. He would be glad to help you... to find someone to help you.” He hesitated a second more, then tipped his hat at her, an automatic gesture. Turning away from the desk, he walked to the door.

The wind billowed round his knees as he pushed his way out.

“Well?” The question was gruff. He looked Josiah's way just long enough to see the intelligent, anxious eyes staring right into him. Next to him J.D. looked worried and hopeful in equal measure.

“No,” he said as he came through them, his forward momentum gathering them at his back as he walked fast, head down, towards the livery and the spot outside the empty sheriff’s office where their horses were tethered.

“Darn it, she wouldn’t talk?” J.D. pattered along in his wake. “Not even to you?”

“We were wrong,” Ezra said shortly, his head turning only slightly. He didn’t intend at all to tell them exactly why things hadn’t gone to plan. “I was wrong. She doesn’t know anything.”

“But you said...” J.D. began again.

Ezra didn't know if Josiah had done something, made some gesture perhaps, out of the line of his vision. Whatever it was, J.D. shut up before he got going, and in any case, all their attention was caught then by Buck and Chris who were coming towards the horses from the other end of the street, the chink of Chris’s spurs loud.

"We're riding out, may have a lead!" Buck looked disheveled, his bandana askew. He sounded breathless and stormy.

"The hotel woman?" Chris was asking. Of course Chris was asking. Ezra couldn’t see his face, could only judge his reaction by what he knew from the past. He squared his shoulders.

"She doesn't know anything." It wasn’t quite accurate, seeing as he supposed she just might. Some faces perhaps, or details of faces, more likely voices. Clothing, maybe. Smells. He shuddered inwardly, revised his words, so they made sense to him at least. “She can’t tell us anything.”

"You're sure?"

Again the question. And laced with a certain cynicism which he could hardly blame Chris for. After all, Ezra had been imperiously ‘sure’ when he’d first headed up to the hotel. He’d been ‘sure’ in his own mind right up until the handkerchief.

"Call it a gut feeling.” He moved uncomfortably inside his jacket, face hot. The collar of his shirt tightened around his throat. He didn't add ‘you’ll just have to trust me’, managed to bite that back just in time. "Whoever these felons are, there’s a lot of them, I can tell you that much, and they’re not playin’ games.” He took a breath, met Chris’s gaze unflinchingly. “I know it’s not what you wanted to hear, that it doesn’t help.”

He got a look then all right, although not the one he’d anticipated. Nothing like that night outside the saloon. It was a straight, accepting, right in the eyes look, the same kind Chris exchanged with Vin all the time.

“You being so damned sure of things makes me nervous,” he said. “But if you got a gut feeling...”

Before he turned to his mount he muttered something else that, with the dust eddying up and the general movement of men and horses, Ezra wasn’t quite sure he’d caught.

'Good enough for me,' was what he wanted to believe.

Chasing after the lead Buck had already set up, for good or ill, he decided he’d go with that.


End file.
